OFFERING HOPE AT HOME

Together for Hope seeks to make us aware of the poverty needs of people around our homes as well in the nation’s poorest counties. The story below is an example of home base sensitivity and response.

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“Do you need help with that,” I asked. The young black woman was trying to open the hood of her car and wasn’t having much luck, so I stopped to help.

As I opened the hood of her car, she spoke in an anxious voice. “It’s smoking. I wonder why it’s smoking. Can you tell why it’s smoking?” After further conversation and examination, I asked if she minded if I started the car. When I cranked the motor it ran wide open!

I shuttered as she told of her harrowing experience while driving across town. “The car kept speeding up. With my foot off the accelerator, it kept speeding. I almost ran under the back of an eighteen wheeler! When I turned down the city street, I couldn’t get it to stop. I ran through three red lights! I even managed to drive between two lanes of traffic going in my direction another time. When I finally got here I didn’t pull all the way up to the curb because I was afraid I would run into the building.” When she parked she finally, apparently, thought to turn off the ignition.

What should I do, I pondered? I was tempted to wish her well and go on my way. I kept thinking of the Good Samaritan story. What would a Christian neighbor do?

I remembered Byron and Toni Buffalo, a pastor and wife from the Reservation. They had just told how a few nights ago they were driving home after a very tiring week of hosting visiting mission groups. They were looking forward to finally having a night when they could get home reasonably early. Then they came upon a stalled car, out in the middle of nowhere.

Although exhausted, Byron and Toni stopped, hooked onto the stranded car with a tow strap, and pulled the car thirty miles to the owner’s home in Eagle Butte. “We got home at 1:30 A. M.,” Tony said.

I spent all morning that day, helping Demaris. With the help of a Liberty policeman, we pushed her car to the city parking lot. She used my cell phone to call the car’s owner in Arkansas. Afterward I drove her in my car to Kansas City, Kansas and dropped her off at her work place

Together for Hope is the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s commitment to being the presence of Christ while working for economic and community development among the United States’ twenty poorest counties. TFH aims to lead cooperating churches to respond with material and loving acts to the needs of those counties. TFH has another aim as well. TFH wants to sensitize churches to human needs of people in their home communities. Demaris is an example of the mission needs that are all around us.